What to do about dead links

This Blog shows excerpts from articles at other websites and the links to original articles.  Usually there is a link at the end of a given excerpt or quote, a link (e. g.: Full Story) that leads to the original location of an article from which an excerpt was taken and quoted.

Those links often go dead or become dysfunctional as time goes by.  The time interval for that to happen varies.  For instance, many newspaper websites show articles only for a limited time that ranges anywhere from 24 hours to a few days, a week or sometimes even years.  After a link goes dead, it is often possible to obtain an archived copy of an article by a news paper or magazine, usually for a fee.

Fortunately, it is often possible to access an archived version of an article identified by a dead link.  The way to do that is to copy a link location and to enter it in the searchfield at the Internet Archive.  Here are the detailed steps for doing that.

1. Place your cursor on a link that you found to be dead;
2. Right-click the dead link, that opens a pop-up menu;
3. Select “Copy Link Location” and left-click your selection;
4. Use your browser to go to http://www.archive.org/;
5. In the screen that will be shown, move your cursor to the search-input field at the upper left-hand portion of the screen and left-click your mouse;
6. Press the following key combinations: either<alt>+<e>+<p> or <crt>+<v>
   That will paste the link location you copied into that search field; and
7. Click on the “GO!” button to the right of the search field.  If the website at one time contained a page with an article to which the dead links now points, the next thing that will happen (provided that the website permits being crawled) is that a list of link locations for that article will be shown.

The later entries in the list of link locations may not be the ones you are looking for, as the contents of a given article at a link location may have been replaced after ownership of the relevant website expired.  However, if that is the case, go to links for earlier years and dates.  Eventually you will most likely find the article you are looking for.

The dates for the various link locations represent the dates on which the website with the article you are looking for was crawled.  What that means is that you can look up a sequence of issues for a given web page.  That will work not only for dead links but also for existing web pages.  The good thing about that is that you can look up information that has been edited out of a given web page or look for information that was added to a web page.  That often comes in handy when trying to determine how and how often the “truth” (all of the truth and nothing but the truth) that is being presented on a web page (e. g.: a controversial entry at Wikipedia) changes as time goes by.

If you wish to help to keep dads & things current and credible, please post a comment to the blog entry for which you found a replacement for a dead link and identify the replacement link.